Cox v. Sony Music Briefs Re-Served Amid Supreme Court Battle

Photo Credit: Cox Enterprises

Four weeks out from the high-stakes Cox v. Sony Music Supreme Court argument – and with billions of dollars on the line – both sides have once again served their lengthy briefs.

The ISP petitioners and the major label respondents just recently made those service notices official ahead of a scheduled December 1st hearing. As many are already aware, there’s a lot riding on the Supreme Court showdown – referring not only to the $1 billion infringement verdict against Cox, but also to stayed copyright suits involving different internet companies.

Against this backdrop, the U.S. government (which will support Cox during the oral argument), the NMPA, tech giants, ISPs, the ACLU, SoundExchange, A2IM, and several others have fired off briefs of their own.

We’ve highlighted the positions’ key takeaways – besides exploring the main litigants’ contentions. Now, as initially mentioned, the entities have doubled down on the views by once again serving their briefs.

On Cox’s end, that re-service occurred on October 30th, when an attorney for the ISP mailed and emailed the brief, according to the appropriate proof of service document. The Sony Music respondents, for their part, today re-served counsel for Cox and, on the government’s side, solicitor general D. John Sauer.

We previously covered the same briefs (which, as a result of minor formatting changes, have slightly different word counts this time around) when they were first submitted; Cox offered its close to 60-page stance in late August, with Sony Music’s 50-page reply brief following in mid-October.

Unsurprisingly, given that the overarching legal battle is almost eight years old, the briefs didn’t break a ton of new ground. But they did provide a worthwhile look at the case’s core arguments and questions – details about which will certainly prove useful as the process plays out.

For Cox, that all boils down to whether ISPs should be held secondarily liable for subscribers’ alleged infringement – with a particular emphasis on the perceived slippery slope associated with compelling account terminations for alleged repeat infringers.

The precedent and the Sony side’s position, the ISP maintains, would turn “internet providers into internet police and” jeopardize “internet access for millions of users.” (Cox has also defended its “extraordinarily effective” approach to handling infringement notices.)

In the opposite corner, Team Sony is still calling out Cox’s alleged “deliberate and egregious decision to elevate its own profits over compliance with the law” – and criticizing as meritless the claim that upholding the lower-court ruling would lead to mass internet service terminations.

“While Cox waxes poetic about the centrality of internet access to modern life,” one relevant section reads, “it neglects to mention that it had no qualms about terminating 619,711 subscribers for nonpayment over the same period that it terminated just 32 for serial copyright abuse.

“And while Cox stokes fears of innocent grandmothers and hospitals being tossed off the internet for someone else’s infringement, Cox put on zero evidence that any subscriber here fit that bill,” Sony Music’s brief continues.